ANTHEM

Questioning contemporary dance’s predisposition towards neutrality, authenticity and the de-sexualization of the female body, ANTHEM embraces theatricality, virtuosity and sass.
The work weaves together existing and imagined vernacular dance styles to explore labor, play, and feminine-posturing. Four women execute a repetitive yet complex movement vocabulary that evolves as they rotate hypnotically within the confines of a square. Over time, the meditative rigor of their steps dissolves into a tangle of commotion, blurring the distinction between the mundane and the glamorous. Choreographer Milka Djordjevich works with long-time collaborators Chris Peck, whose music both supports and subverts the rhythmic contrasts of the choreography, and Madeline Best, whose lighting design emphasizes the psychedelic visual character of the piece.

Choreography: Milka Djordjevich
Performance: Laurel Atwell, Jessica Cook, Dorothy Dubrule and devika wickremesinghe
Music: Chris Peck
Lighting: Madeline Best
Costumes: Naomi Luppescu
Performance Advisor: Alison D’Amato

Milka Djordjevich is a choreographer whose work draws from a variety of compositional strategies to question preconceived notions of what dance should or should not be. Her work has been shown at many venues, including REDCAT, Grand Performances, Pieter, the Hammer Museum, Machine Project, Showbox LA/Bootleg Theater, and HomeLA in Los Angeles; the Kitchen, the Chocolate Factory Theater, the Whitney Museum, the American Realness Festival, and Danspace Project in New York; Counterpulse and the Berkeley Art Museum in Northern California; and internationally in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia, and the UK. Djordjevich was a 2006-2007 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and a 2008/2010 danceWEB Europe Scholar, and she is currently a 2017-2018 Princeton University Hodder Fellow. Her other projects include serving as guest editor for Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence and initiating the Monday Morning Class series at Pieter. Djordjevich has co-authored works with composer Chris Peck, choreographer Dragana Bulut, designer Samuel Yang, and artist Marcos Luytens. She has twice served as Visiting Assistant Professor in the UC Riverside Dance Department and has taught at UC Irvine, AMDA, Pomona College, Movement Research and PICA’s TBA: 15 Festival. In 2016, Djordjevich established STANA, an organization cultivating local, national and international dance connections. www.thisismilka.com

ANTHEM was commissioned by the Chocolate Factory Theater and Los Angeles Performance Practice.